"We started the killings only to draw the attention of the Western Press to our cause. CNN has come to visit us. BBC has come to visit us. Rabin Raphael also came and visited us here. Now we have announced unilateral ceasefire. We want to have a political dialogue. We want peace, but the martyrdom of our Freedom fighters cannot be forgotten. They call us terrorists, but they reward Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat with Nobel Peace Prize."
The JKLF now limits itself to street fights and bandhs and to exhibiting the photographs of their dead. I remember Javed Mir pointing out to me a particular photograph – of a few months old dead child – and making me feel guilty as if it was my own daughter I had allowed to be killed.
As I write this, I hear on TV of a yet another suicide attack on an Army camp at Jammu. 12 children have been killed, among them a 3 month old child. Javed Ahmed Mir is silent in Srinagar yet.
They have mastered to speak eloquently about ‘their’ pain and ‘their sacrifices’ to seek rewards in return. About the pain of others they speak with forked tongues, they say ‘it was a mistake’. They condemn India of its ‘Human Rights Violations’ and they overlook the rapes and vengeance killings by the freedom fighters within their own ranks. They speak of their own dead and forget to mourn the deaths they themselves caused. Innocents all:
Shakeela w/o Ali Mohammad Dar - abducted, gang raped and tortured to death.
Mir Mustafa - A political leader, kidnapped, tortured and strangulated to death.
Dolly Mohi-ud-Din - kidnapped, tortured, gang raped and shot dead.
Sarla Bhatt, Staff Nurse at SKIMS - kidnapped, raped and shot dead.
Prof.Mushir-ul-Haq - Kidnapped and shot dead.
H.L. Khera - Kidnapped and shot dead.
Sohan Lal Braro - Shot dead.
Archana Braro - gang raped, tortured and shot dead.
Bimla Braro - gang raped and shot dead.
Mohammad Amin Cheentagar - beheaded.
Tika Lal Taploo, Political leader - shot dead.
M. K. Ganjoo, retired Judge - shot dead.
Lassa Kaul, Station Director Doordarshan Srinagar - shot dead.
Satish Bhan, social worker - shot dead.
Ghulam Nabi Kullar, Communist - shot dead.
Abdul Sattar Ranjoor, poet - shot dead.
Maulana Masoodi, an intellectual &Freedom fighter - shot dead.
Syed Ghulam Nabi, Government Official - shot dead.
Moulvi Farooq, a religious leader - shot dead.
The list is a long one, this is just of some who come to mind readily ... and there are many more who still continue to die …not any of these died by police firing.
…and hundreds of pairs of shoes the mourners left behind, as they ran from the funeral, victims of the firing. From windows we hear grieving mothers, and snow begins to fall on us, like ash. Black on edges of flames, it cannot extinguish the neighborhoods, the homes set ablaze by midnight soldiers. Kashmir is burning.
Agha Shahid Ali
Who killed Mir Mustafa?
Who killed Dr. Gooru?
Who killed Moulvi Farouk?
Who killed Qazi Nisar?
Who killed Abdul Ghani Lone?
Kashmir is burning still, who lit the fire?
Who burnt the Chrar-e-Sharif?
Whose midnight soldiers?
In the Month of February in 1990, Kashmiris used to go in trucks and buses in processions to Chrar-e-Sharif shrine, to pray for ‘azadi’. They used to tie threads as promise in return for fulfillment of their dreams. In 1995, they stood silent as ‘Foreign Militants’ - representing a brand of Islam alien to the very ethos of Kashmir - lay siege to our prime shrine and let it be burnt down by a Must Gul, who escaped to a hero’s welcome in Pakistan.
…"All threads must be untied
before springtime. Ask all – Muslim and Brahmin - if their wish came true?
He appears beside me, cloaked in black: "Alas! Death has bent my back.
It is too late for threads at Chrar-e-Sharif." …
Agha Shahid Ali
The threads are there no more now. Along with the Shrine, the hopes for that ‘azadi’ also lie in ruins. Today they go to the burnt down shrine at Chrar and to their Sufi ‘Pirs’ not to pray for ‘azadi’ but for the return of sanity to Kashmir.
"Rehman Sahib is one faith healer in whom thousands of locals, especially women, believe. He lives in a mud house at Aalistang in the outskirts of Srinagar, where his sitting room is always full of mureeds (devotees). One after another, they come close and whisper their problems in his ear. "Please pray and stop my son. He wants to be a militant," a mother from nearby Waheedpora village in Ganderbal requested the peer sahib (saint) one recent morning. Another woman sought help for an end to nocturnal raids by the security forces on her house. "I have two grown-up unmarried daughters. It is dangerous. Please help," she begged, and started crying."
Muzamil Jaleel
But why does the fire that lit Chrar-e-Sharif consume us still?
Because they betrayed Nund Rishi by their silence and they allowed their temples to be desecrated and they lied about their betrayal of our Gods to the entire world
"Kashmir is burning:
By that dazzling light
we see men removing statues from temples.
We beg them, "Who will protect us if you leave?"
They don’t answer; they just disappear
on the road to the plains, clutching the gods."
Agha Shahid Ali
An obvious reference to the Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir, the above lines of a poem, by its implication and compounded and by its extraordinary formal brilliance suggests that the Kashmiri Pandits left despite being stopped by their neighbours and that they came away carrying their temple gods along with them.
In reality, nothing could be farther from the actual truth. In his poetic lament about the pain of Kashmir - often searing imagery…his voice unerringly eloquent in response to Kashmir’s agony", as Edward Said writes in his praise on the back cover - Agha Shahid Ali can barely remember the agony faced by his Pandit friends in those euphoric days of near freedom, when it appeared as if the whole Muslim population of Srinagar had come out on the streets shouting "allah-o-akbar’, ‘hum kya chahite - azadi’ and ‘death to Indian dogs’.
He can barely remember, ‘the call to all Muslims of Kashmir to revolt’ which was announced - from pre-recorded audiocassettes - through the loudspeakers of mosques all over Srinagar city. He can barely bring himself to imagine the panic of a miniscule community, faced with the impotence of an administration in Kashmir that had suddenly vanished…He can barely remember, that this miniscule community was looking in the face of a yet another forced migration, the fourth in the span of a few hundred years…
Your memory gets in the way of my memory
Shahid
Twelve years later, when I came to Kashmir, I chanced upon a temple at Rainawari.
I opened the door, but Shahid, there was no god inside, it’s true.
It was all filth and ashes there, walls smeared with human refuse of many years:
How could you not have seen them, stopped them - the kalashnikov people -
from stealing my gods and burning your temples?
I asked a Kashmiri Pandit friend, who is now settled in a far way land, to explain to me why Kashmiri Pandits chose to come away rather than stay back and fight. He wrote back to me, a long letter:
"You have seen the sober faces of the population there (12 years after) but what I have experienced cannot be put into words. It was a feeling of uncertainty and isolation with doubts about the sincerity of your closest associates. It was almost being enslaved with the tyrannical smile of the victor haunting you.
"It was the time to decide whether you would be able to accept the NIZAM-E-MUSTAFA (rule of the faithful), either willingly or after seeing your family dishonoured and massacred. Do remember that it was a well thought of plan to drive all kafirs away.
"The area commander of any area never was native of the same area and thus would not relate to you. His only aim was subjugation in the name of Allah. Killing in his name was justified as was revealed by Javed Mir in your documentary. Previously (Before 1990), our differences could be settled by a word for word or at the most a fistfight. Now it was the kalishnikov.
"Fathers would not dare to discuss the futility or viability of the actions. Brothers would not trust Brothers lest they would be killed. THE FEAR WAS TOTAL. The sane had no say and the insane were driven into frenzy by their masters. Chaos was total and administration had collapsed completely.
"It is too simplistic when I put it into words but just close your eyes and imagine the plight. There can be no proper description of the events in words. Finally it was our worldly wisdom, which made all of us to flee the place. When I migrated, I had to fend for family and myself. The options were either to organize a resistance OR to start afresh. I chose the latter." …
If only somehow you could have been mine,
what wouldn’t have happened in this world?
I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive. You won’t forgive me….
Agha Shahid Ali
But there is a lot to forgive and ask forgiveness for. The first thing that has to be answered about Kashmir is about Kashmiri Pandits forced abandonment of their motherland.
Who orchestrated their deaths, their feeling of persecution, and their fear?
Who sent them the anonymous letters asking them to leave forthwith?
Who sponsored those ads, those notices in leading local Dailies of Kashmir, threatening the Pandits of dire consequences, if they did not leave?
It surely was not because Jagmohan, the then administrative head of J&K, facilitated the exodus, as Indian Human Rights people would like us to believe. To Kashmiri pandits, Jagmohan in his person represents the abject failure of the ‘state’ in not protecting, nor ensuring the safety of its ‘non-violent’ citizens, who remained true in their loyalty to India.
It's true, and I am ashamed to admit, as most Pandits now are, that when they came as refugees to Jammu and Delhi, they went straight into the arms of "the Hindu Parties". But tell me, what are a ‘traumatised’ people supposed to do, but hope for refuge in the camp of a party ‘supposedly their own’, when threatened by ‘Islamic forces’ and when betrayed by the secular forces of India? Which secular institution of India has spoken up for the trauma of Kashmiri Pandits yet? The irony here is that even the human rights activists who have so tirelessly tabulated all the atrocities inflicted upon a hapless minority in Gujarat still continue to silently acquiesce in the forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits quoting Governor Jagmohan as an alibi.
And after forgiveness, There is a dispute to settle.
The fact of the matter is, between Us and Them, Between India and Kashmir, between India and Pakistan there are many disputes to settle. Central to the resolution of all these disputes, is the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. The genesis of these disputes has forever been prone to myriad interpretations and conflicting points of view - of the experts as well as the layperson - which no amount of logic, good sense and wars seem to unravel or resolve.
In the words of a Pakistani writer:
"When India's Home Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel sent feelers about a possible give-and-take on Hyderabad and Kashmir, Ghulam Mohammed is said to have spurned this opportunity and carried on his lucrative dealings with Hyderabad Nizam. Pakistan also welcomed the accession of Junagadh and Manavadar, whereas an overwhelming majority in both states (as well as Hyderabad) was Hindu.
"In effect, Pakistan held three divergent positions on the question of accession—in favour of the Hyderabad Nizam's right to independence, Junagadh's right to accede to Pakistan against the wish of the populace, and, in Kashmir, for the right to self determination. Double standard is a common enough practice in politics, but it invariably harms the actor who lacks the power to avert consequences.
"The Nawab of Junagadh tried to deliver his Hindu-majority state to Pakistan, which set the precedence for the Maharaja of Muslim-dominated Kashmir choosing India. Pakistan did not have the power to defend either the Nawab or the Nizam, nor the will to punish the Maharaja. So India, practising double standards in its turn, took it all.
Eqbal Ahmad
That may well be the truth about J&K’s accession to India, to many Kashmiris, Pakistanis and even to some Indians, but there are also other truths. The truth about Sheikh Abdullah’s genuine liking for Indian secularism. The truth about his preferring to stay with India rather than with Pakistan. The truth about his not insisting on ‘azadi’ before or after 1953. The truth about Sheikh Abdullah being a genuine and great leader of Kashmiris. The truth about Faroukh Abdullah being an inept inheritor of Sheikh Abdullah’s legacy.
The problem with truths is that it has not brought us, at any point of time, any closer to a resolution than it ever can, even 50 or 100 years from now.
There is one another story by Amin Kamil, which expresses the nature of this dispute much plainly than any amount of explanation or writings have so far.
The story What Matters Is The Head describes a dispute between two thanedaars of adjacent police stations over a murdered corpse found lying at the boundary of their respective area jurisdiction. Before the culprit can be found or the murdered person identified, it is necessary to determine in which thanedaar's jurisdiction the murdered person was found.
The case is confounded by the fact that it is difficult to determine in which side of the boundary the head of the deceased lay, because the thanedaars have conflicting proofs. The respective thanedaars, in order to prove their claim about the jurisdictional right over the corpse, wrangle in colourful language over the finer details, the technicalities and the forensic procedure, thus in fact relegating the dead corpse and its case to oblivion.
Finally, the bewildered bystander watching the entire drama is exasperated by this jurisdictional drama to ask for a final resolution. He is told, "What matters really is for us to find towards which side the head of the corpse lay. So long as this is not resolved, the matter will linger on as it is."
"But what about the corpse, meanwhile?"
"Let it rot." (Sadne do ji)
"India's policies have been no less riddled with blunders than Pakistan's. Its moral isolation on Kashmir is nearly total, and unlikely to be overcome by military means or political manipulation. New Delhi commands not a shred of legitimacy among Kashmiri Muslims. Ironically, even as India's standing in Kashmir appears increasingly untenable, Kashmiris today appear farther from the goal of liberation than they were in the years 1989 to 1992."
Eqbal Ahmad
It is true; Kashmir’s problems are as a result of our country’s folly and blunders. Our follies and blunders in Kashmir are compounded by the fact of Partition and by the existence of a dispute, as our permanent neighbour enemy continues to insist. Kashmir has been used to bleed purportedly for a cause in which not many Kashmiris believe.
The resolution of the historical dispute between India and Pakistan – through logic, diplomacy, wars, and terrorism or by time - has defied a sane answer for the last 55 years. Nor does it seem any likely that India and Pakistan can co-exist in peace by any stratagem invented or discovered so far.
Meanwhile, the deaths and the killings of the innocents in Kashmir continues. We are as close to a war as at any time before. Kashmir is caught in the crossfire of History. Kashmir was happy and prosperous once, when it had chosen not to be in the crossfire.
It’s more than a year since my last visit to Kashmir. The tumultuous events of the past year – September 11, December 13 Parliament Attack, The Fall of the Taliban in Afgahnistan, President of Pakistan’s famous January 12 speech denouncing Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism, and the most recent catastrophe of ‘state sponsored pogrom’ in Gujarat and the terrorist attack on children and women at a Army camp in Jammu, have completely altered my fundamental understanding of the nature of man and along with it, the perception about man’s sense of his morals…which allow him to justify one violent cause at one place as ‘just’ and to condemn another equally violent cause as ‘unacceptable’ to civilization.
I have never felt so powerless before the ‘insane’ insistence by men - of presumably immeasurable human values and inestimable intellectual capabilities - of their personal dogmas and points of view and the catastrophic consequences thereof. I therefore repudiate every ideology that leads to violence.
And I want to ask my people in Kashmir: Isn’t it time that Kashmiri people resolved, once for and all, to give up the option of violence as a means to finding the solution to a historically vexed problem?
The above is an account of my first journey to Kashmir in 12 years since I was there last. I still have a home there and I am looking forward to my permanent return as soon as I can determine for myself that my life and freedom will not be at any more risk there as it is here.
Ajay Raina is a film maker. His film about homecoming - "Tell them, the tree they had planted has now grown" - won the Golden Conch award at Mumbai Festival 2002 and the RAPA award.
This article was published in OutlookIndia.
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